Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Feel Good

OK. I have finished reading a superhero novel and am back to reading straight sf, to be followed by Poul Anderson's detective fiction. However, there is something that might be of interest to Poul Anderson Appreciation readers. Anderson wrote fantasy and sf. Superhero fiction combines these genres. Thus, in Elliot S. Maggin's Superman: Miracle Monday, Kristin Wells travels by technological means from the twenty ninth century, then, after arriving in the twentieth century, is possessed by a demon from Hell! Anderson, like most writers of imaginative fiction, keeps technological time travel in one genre and demons in another.

The outcome of the temptation of Superman has theological implications that prompted me to compare it with the New Testament and Paradise Regained. See here. Miracle Monday is a feel good book that everyone deserves to know about.

Superman's powers gradually got out of control in the comics -- in the early issues, he can't fly, for example. He -jumps- over buildings. (And a lot of the details were cribbed from the "Doc Savage" pulp adventure novels -- both have a "Fortress of Solitude", for example.)

As time went on, Superman became more and more omnipotent, but that makes for terrible plotting problems. It's no wonder they had to invent Kryptonite.

Mr Stirling,Also, the writers introduced Superman's vulnerability to magic and reduced his powers in later continuities but Neil Gaiman went against this by deliberately writing about near omnipotent characters in THE SANDMAN.Paul.

I don't buy it. Superman stories take place in the context of great power, but they are not about power. They are about moral and ethical choices. Every Superman story is properly premised on a single question: "What do you do in a specific given situation when you've got all the power in the world?" My editor told me, when he gave me the assignment to write my first Superman story, that he was the most difficult character to write. I found this to be inaccurate. If it is a writer's intention to write a story with lots of punching and stuff blowing up it might well be a Superman story but that's not all it needs to have. If it doesn't address that question, its not a Superman story.